Return to the Lecture Notes Index

15-123 Lecture 14 (Tuesday, October 23, 2007)

Today's files

A Quick Review

Okay. Before we dig in to today's topic, "Binary Search Trees (BSTs)", let's do a quick review of some stuff you might have seen before: searching.

The "Sequential Search", a.k.a., The "Brute Force Search" and The "Linear Search"

One approach to search for something is just to consider each item, one at a time, until it is found -- or there are no more items to search. I remember using this approach quite a bit as a child. I'd open my toy box and throw each toy out, until I found the one I was looking for. (Unfortunately, this approach normally resulted in a parental command to clean my room -- and sometimes quite a fuss).

Imagine that I had a toybox containing 10 items. In the average case, I'd end up throwing 4 or 5 items on the floor, and my treasured toy would be the 5th or 6th item -- I'd have to search half of the toy box. Sometimes, I would find it the first time -- right on top. Sometimes it'd be the last one -- at the very bottom. And on the balance of occasions -- somewhere in between.

A Quick Look at the Cost of Sequential Searching

So if, in performing a linear search, we get lucky, we'll find what we are looking for on the first try -- we'll only have to look at one item. But, if we get unlucky, it'll be the last item that we consider, and we'll have had to look at each and every item. In the average case, we'll look at about half of the items.

Since the worst case could require looking at each and every item, it is really easy to see that this seach is O(n). And, the average case is also linear time -- so, unlike quick sort, this is rough going in most cases.

The "Binary" Search

But let's consider a different case for a moment: the case of a sorted, indexed list. Let's consider, for example, looking for a particular number in a sorted list of numbers stored within an array or Vector:

Numbers: 3 7 8 9 11 14 19 25 31 32
Index: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

We know that this list is in order. So we know that there is just as good a chance that it comes before the "middle" as it does after the "middle". In other words, whatever number we are looking for is just as likely to be in the list of numbers with indexes 0-4 as it is the list with indexes 5-9.

So we can compare the number with one of the two "middle" numbers, the number at index 4 or the number at index 5. If it happens to be the one we're looking for, we got lucky -- and can celebrate.

If not, we'll know better where to look. If it is less than this "middle" number, then it has an index less than the middle number. If it is greater than the middle number, then it has an index greater than the middle number. Either way, we've eliminated half of the possible places to search. We can search much faster by considering only those numbers in the right half of the list.

Since this approach decides between searching two sublists, it is often known as a binary search. Binary means having two states -- in this case, left and right (a.k.a, less than and greater than).

To better illustrate this, I'll pseudocode this algorithm recursively, and then go through it by hand. The recursive algorithm looks like this:

  public static boolean searchSortedIntArray (int findMe, int[] list, int beginIndex, int endIndex)
  {
    int middleIndex = beginIndex + (endIndex - beginIndex)/2;

    // If the middle point matches, we've won
    if (list[middleIndex] == findMe)
      return true;

    // If it is in the left list, and the left list is non-empty, look there.
    if ( (list[middleIndex] > findMe) && (middleIndex > beginIndex) )
      return searchSortedIntArray (findMe, list, beginIndex, middleIndex-1 );

    // If it is in the right list and the right list is non-empty, look there.
    if ( (list[middleIndex] < findMe) && (middleIndex < endIndex) )
      return searchSortedIntArray (findMe, list, middleIndex+1, endIndex);

    // We're not it and the correct sub-list is empty -- return false
    return false;
  }
  

Now to go through it by hand, let's first pick a number in the list: 8. We start out looking at index (9 / 2) = 4, which contains 11. Since 7 is less than 11, we consider the sublist with indexes 0 - 3. Since (3 / 2) = 1, we next consider 7, the valuse at index 1. Since 7 is less than 8, we look at its right sublist: beginning with index 2 and ending with index 3. The next "middle" index is 2 + (3 / 2) = 3. Index 3 contains 8, so we return true. As things unwind, that propagates to the top.

Now, let's pick a number that is not in the list: 26. Again, we start with the value 11 at index 4 -- this time we go next to the right sublist with indexes 5 through 9. The new pivot point is 7. The value at this point is 25. Since 26 is greater than 25, we consider the right sublist with indexes 8 and 9. The new pivot is index 8, which holds the value 31. Since 26 is less than 31, we want to look at the left sublist, but we can't, it is empty. Index 26 is both the middle point, and the left point. So, we return false, and this is propogated through the unwinding -- 26 is not in the list.

A Careful Look at the Cost of Binary Search

Each time we make a decision, we are able to divide the list in half. So, we divide the list in half, and half again, and again, until there is only 1 thing left. Discounting the "off by one" that results from taking the "pivot" middle value out, we're dividing the list exactly in half each time and searching only one half.

As a result, in the worst case, we'll have to search log2 N items. Remember 2X = N. So for a list of 8 items, we'll need to consider approximately 3 of them. Take a look at the table below, and trace through a list by hand to convince yourself:

NMax. Attempts
11=(0+1); 20=1
22=(1+1); 21=2
32=(1+1); 21=2
43=(2+1); 22=4
53=(2+1); 22=4
63=(2+1); 22=4
73=(2+1); 22=4
83=(2+1); 22=4
94=(3+1); 23=8
94=(3+1); 23=8
104=(3+1); 23=8
114=(3+1); 23=8
124=(3+1); 23=8
134=(3+1); 23=8
144=(3+1); 23=8
154=(3+1); 23=8
165=(4+1); 24=16

And as before, the average number of attempts will be half of the maximum number of attempts, as shown in the plots below:


Worst case of binary search


Average case of binary search

Binary Search: No Silver Bullet

So, instead of searching in O(n) time using a linear search, we can search in O(log n) time, usng a binary search -- that's a huge win. But there is a big catch -- how do we get the list in sorted order?

We can do this with a quadratic sort, such as Bubble Sort, Selection Sort, or Insertion Sort, in which case the sort takes O(n2) time. Or, we can use Quick Sort, in which case, if we are not unlucky, it'll take O(n log n) time. And soon, we'll learn about another technique that will let us reliably sort in O(n log n) time. But, none of these options are particularly attractive.

If we are frequently inserting into our list, and have no real reason to keep it sorted, except to search, our search really degenerates to O(n log n) -- becuase we are sorting just to search. And, O(n log n) is worse than the O(n) "brute force" search.

Hmmm...there has to be a better way...

Pondering the Big Picture

When we perform a binary search, what we are really doing is creating a tree of sorts. We'll discuss trees in more detail very soon. So, don't worry about the details right now. Instead, just think of this tree as a "decision tree", such as one you might encounter in a business class.

Each time we pick a new number and ask, "Is this it? If not, which side is it one?" What we are really doing is creating two lists from the original list, those less than the number and those greater than the number. Then, we are eliminating at least one of the lists (both of the lists, if the number happens to be the one we're looking for).

Let's consider our prior example one more time. But, this time, let's draw out the entire tree, and show the possible sub-lists:

The figure above should highlight the strategy here pretty well: divided the ordered list into partitions, until we find the right partition. Each time, we have half as many items to search. Also, for anyone still haivng difficulty understanding why the search is O(log n), maybe this helps -- notice the length of the branches with respect to the number of items in the list. The longest branches are log2 n.

Introduction to Binary Search Trees (BSTs)

The next data structure that we'll examine is known as a Binary Search Tree, most often known simply as a BST. The theory of operation is going to be basically the same as that of the binary search, except that it'll be a little more "relaxed".

Instead of building the entire tree in advance, by sorting the list of numbers using something like quick sort or selection sort, we are going to build it "as we go along", by inserting the numbers into the tree. This is very similar to, for example, using insertion sort instead of selection sort.

But, unlike using insertion sort as the basis for a binary search, we're going to do something a little faster -- but a little less exact. Let's take a look:

How Do Binary Search Trees (BSTs) Work?

BSTs are trees. Each node of the tree is much like a node of a linked list. It contains a value, and references to up to two other nodes. Each of these nodes, in turn, contains a value and a reference to up to two other nodes. We call these other nodes the left and right children.

The idea is that each node represents some point within a sorted list. To the left of this point lie values less than it. To the right of this point lie values greater than it. It is important to realize that there might be no value in either direction, or the node in that direction might, itself have children.

But since this property can be applied recursively, we know that all of the nodes to the left of a particular node, even if they are children of (below) another node, are less than the node. The same goes for all of the nodes to the right.

One way of thinking of this is that each node is the root of two subtrees: the left subtree and the right subtree. Everything in the left subtree is less than the root. Everythign in the right subtree is greater than the root.

The important thing about this arrangement is that we can, as we did before, work our way form the top (root) of this tree to the bottom, dividing the list each time, so we can discard all of the possibilities in one direction or the other.

Constructing a Binary Search Tree

Let's construct a binary search tree using by inserting the letters of "HELLO WORLD" into the tree one at a time. For convenience, we will ignore duplicate letters.

How did this work? Let's go through the string one letter at a time.

The result is the tree you see. If you look at any node in the tree, you will see that the binary search tree ordering property holds.

An Example of Using A Binary Search Tree?

Suppose we're looking for the letter F in the "HELLO WORLD" tree. We can immediately eliminate everything to the right of the H, because we know that F can't be there because F comes before H. We move on to E, and we can eliminate everything on its left, because we know that it can't be there because it comes after E. E's right child is null, so we have determined that F is not in the tree by only looking at 2 of the 7 nodes.

How Much Does It Cost?

How many nodes do we have to look at in a tree before we know that an item is not in the tree? To simplify this, we will only look at the best possible trees of a given size. These best trees are complete and balanced, meaning that the path from the root to the farthest leaf is at most one step longer than the path from the root to the closest leaf. The following are examples of balanced trees:

So how many nodes do we have to look at in the worst case? If there are N nodes in the tree:

N nodes # looked at
1 1
2 2
3 2
4 3
5 3
6 3
7 3
8 4

You can probably see a pattern here. The number of items you need to look at grows every time we reach a power of 2. We would only need to look at 4 items for trees with between 8 and 15 nodes and then we would have to look at 5 items in a tree with 16 nodes. This is known as logarithmic growth, and we can create a formula for the number of items we need to look at in a tree with N nodes.

# items = (log2 N) + 1

The Costs of a BST

In a tree with 1,000,000 nodes, we would only need to look at 20 nodes to insert or find a node. This is a significant improvement over a linear search and comparable to sorting a list and performing a binary search.

But, in practice, it is much cheaper than sorting a vector, for example using a insertion sort. This is because, if we can accurately capture the tree representation with a data structure, we don't need to "push back" every other node for an insert.

The flip side is that the worst case is bad -- it could degenerate to a linear search of a linked list. Much like a quick sort, this technique is not stable -- but, given typical data performs comparably with the best case.

Now, let's take a look at building a BST library similar in form to out Linked List library.

The Node

Based on what we just said about the structure of the Node, nothing below in the actual implementation should surprise you. Remember that the forward reference, "struct node_t" is no longer required in C -- but is acceptable and provides backward compatibility to older C standards.

  struct node_t;
  typedef struct node_t {
    struct node_t *left;
    struct node_t *right;
    void *item;  
  } node;
  

The BST, itself

If you were unsurprised by the "Node", and even if you weren't, you probably won't be shocked by the definition of the BST struct, itself.

About the only thing of interest is that we defined the "root" as a "struct node_t *", rather than a "node *". We did this because it'll help us keep things untangled when we eventually move the definition of the node and some static functions to an "internal", "bst-int.h" header file. Although "struct node_t" and "node" are equivalent, struct definitions can be referenced before they are defined, but this is not true of typedefs -- and they can't even be typedef'ed.

  typedef struct {
    struct node_t *root;
    unsigned long count;
  } bst;
  

The initBST(...) Function

The init method looks a whole like it did for the linked list. The game is the same -- no surprise.

  int initBST (bst **tree) {

    *tree = malloc (sizeof(bst));
    (*tree)->root = NULL;
    (*tree)->count = 0;
  
    return 0;
  }
  

Now, The Game Changes

We're going to stop implementing for today. Instead, we're going to think forward to next class. We've got a problem to solve between now and then. Unlike our linked lsits of last week, BSTs are ordered data structures. It is essentially that we are able to compare any two data items and decide in which order they go.

But, sadly, our nodes are maintained as "void *" -- we have no idea what they are, never mind how to compare them. They could be, quite literally, anything.

For those of you who have, in the past, implemented BSTs in Java, you might recall that the data type needed to be Comparable or Comparators needed to be passed in alongside the items to perform the comparison.

So, how are we going to do this in C? Well, we're going to follow the same basic idiom as we did with Comprators in Java. But, we don't have first-class objects in C, never mind function objects.

So, instead, we'll make use of function pointers. Much like we passed in our linked lists's print function by reference -- we'll do the same with the function to compare our BSTs nodes (as well as the print function).

Continued...